MonDon junior looks to give teens hope with laptops

TOMS RIVER – Hursh Desai, 17, is hoping that New Jersey teens’ second-hand laptops will help provide a second chance for teens in India.

The Monsignor Donovan High School junior has been collecting laptops for youths in a juvenile detention facility in India through Uplift Humanity India, a Basking Ridge-based non-profit organization that rehabilitates juvenile inmates in South Asia through education.

Desai said the idea to launch Uplift Humanity India’s laptop initiative at his school started when he visited Ahmedabad with the Indian Red Cross Society last summer. Desai said the availability of technology was one of the most glaring disparities between the city areas and the small villages of Ahmedabad.

“It’s important because we here in the U.S. are experienced with technology, but kids in India, they don’t have access to all this technology there,” Desai said. “The simple donation of a laptop, even though it’s used, would be really influential in their lives.”

The Toms River teen will travel to Vadodara, India, next month to volunteer 400 hours teaching impoverished orphans and juveniles about moral decision-making, self-esteem, public speaking and other life skills.

Through his drive, seniors who plan to buy new laptops for college can donate the laptops that were issued to them as Monsignor Donovan freshman. The school’s information technology staffer Ken Dwyer will clear old data from the laptops, and Uplift Humanity will take care of shipping costs to send them to a juvenile detention facility in India.

Desai used the high school’s television station MDTV, fliers and word of mouth to inform the student body about the project. By early June, Desai had collected 14 laptops in four weeks.

Uplift Humanity India CEO Anish Patel said the goal of the computer donation program is to provide vocational training and technology skills for orphans and juvenile inmates so that they have higher job prospects in the future. Patel, a rising junior at New York University Stern School of Business, began Uplift Humanity India when he was a junior at Ridge High School in Basking Ridge.

Students at facilities in Vadodara and Hyderabad will share the Monsignor Donovan laptops, spending a few hours at a time engaging with the technology under the instruction of a teacher and Uplift Humanity India’s approved curriculum, which Patel said provides hands-on education and one-on-one training.

Desai hopes to donate 25 laptops by the end of the school year.

MonDon Vice Principal Kathleen D’Andrea, who has helped oversee the laptop drive, said students at the high school must complete Christian service hours every year.

“Global education is also an important aspect of the school, so this project falls right in line with that focus,” D’Andrea said.

HOW TO HELP

To support Uplift Humanity India, Hursh Desai will hold a flapjack fundraiser 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday at the Applebee’s on Hooper Avenue.